The Importance of Citing Sources and Image Attribution

Regularly writing blogposts has made me a “thinking” author, as well as a “pantser.” I can write using the “stream of consciousness” method, or write from an outline of whatever interests me at the time. I do the research, and the post begins to write itself.

Writing blogposts isn’t that difficult per se, as I can knock one out in less than an hour if I’m fired up about the subject. The real challenge of blogging regularly is finding interesting content. But that is also how you grow in the craft—you become a better writer when you write on a variety of subjects.

The way I handle my blogging commitments is this:

1. During the week I make a note of any interesting topic that might make a good blogpost. The only day I write blogposts is Sunday, but I write the entire week’s posts that day.
2. If there is a lot of research involved I make footnotes at the bottom of my composition document as I go, and getting the articles ready could take the whole day. Usually writing the posts for the week only involves the morning.

For a blogger who posts once a week, it should only take an hour or so.

So WHY did I mention making footnotes? Isn’t that just for academic stuff?

Not at all, Grasshopper. We must give credit where credit is due. That is your legal obligation, but there is a moral one here too: if you wrote something good and someone quoted you verbatim, wouldn’t you want to be credited?

First lets talk images:

When we first begin blogging, sourcing images seems like no big deal. You google what you want, see what images pop up, right click, copy, and use them, right?

WRONG! You can get into NO END of trouble that way. A.J. Downey recently pointed this blogpost out, and it bears being referenced here again: The $7,500 Blogging Mistake That Every Blogger Needs to Avoid!

An excellent article on using Creative Commons Images can be found here:
What Is Creative Commons, And Should You Use It?

I use Wikimedia Commons and Public Domain images. Wikimedia makes it easy for you to get the attributions and licensing for each image. Another good source is Allthefreestock.com, where you can find hundreds of free stock photos, music, and many other things for your blog and other projects.

Sometimes I need images I can only get by paying for them, and I go to Dreamstime or Canstock, and several other reputable sources. For a few dollars, usually only two or three, I then have the right to use them, properly licensed.

I keep a log of where my images are sourced, who created them, and what I used them in. I also insert the attribution into the image details on my website so that when a mouse hovers over the image, curious readers can go to the source. (In WordPress, You must be on the WP Admin dashboard. Click on the image and go to ‘edit details’). If you are able to do this, you won’t have to credit them in your footnotes.

We may want to quote another blogger or use the information we have learned from them. Plagiarism is an ugly word, and you never want to be accused of it. To that end, we cite our sources and only use images we have the legal right to use, also citing their source.

Citing sources:

First of all, I open a document in my word-processing program (I use  Word), save it as whatever the title of the post is in that blog’s file folder, and compose my post the way I would write a story. Composing the body of my post in a document rather than the content area of the blog-template allows me to spell check and edit my work first, and I feel more comfortable writing in a document rather than the content-window.

I keep a log at the bottom of my page of what website, who the author was, the date of publication, and the date I accessed it. I have found the simplest method is the Chicago Manual of Style method:

Purdue OWL Online Writing Lab,  General Model for Citing Books in the Chicago Notes and Bibliography System, Copyright ©1995-2017 by The Writing Lab & The OWL at Purdue and Purdue University. All rights reserved.
Website: https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/717/03 Accessed Jan 10, 2017
 
All of this information for your footnotes can be copied and pasted directly to the BOTTOM of your current document, so everything you need for your blog post is all in one place. When my blog article is complete and ready to posted, this information will go at the bottom of my post beneath a line separating the post from the credits and attribution notes.

When readers view my blog, if my post were one that I did research for, they would see this:

Authors need to blog about who they are and what they do because they can connect with potential readers that way. Using pictures and quoting good sources makes blogs more interesting and informative.
Photographers and artists are just like writers—they are proud of their work and want to be credited for it. Protect yourself and your work by responsibly sourcing your images, giving credit to the authors and artists whose work you use.

Connie J. Jasperson is an author and blogger and can be found blogging regularly at Life in the Realm of Fantasy.